Bodmer, Karl

Lithograph (28 x 23 1/4 in.; 711 x 591 mm), by Th. Fischer.

Very minor spotting, a few stray chips.

AN IMPORTANT APPARENTLY UNRECORDED PIECE OF 19TH-CENTURY PRINTED AMERICANA: a life-size lithographed version of Bodmer's masterful portrait of a principal chief of the Piegan Blackfeet. Mehkskéhme-Sukáhs (“Iron Shirt”), was the most distinguished of the several chiefs who gathered to welcome the arrival of the boat Flora at Fort McKenzie on 9 August 1833. At the time he was wearing a lace-trimmed scarlet uniform obtained from the British traders as a gift. He posed for this portrait on 11 August, wearing a hide shirt decorated with otter fur, beadwork and metal trade buttons. In his hair are feathers, a bear claw, and what appears to be a small ermine with blue beads for eyes.

This print is of a scale only equalled by Audubon's double-elephant folio images.  On the verso is pencilled ‘Th. Fischer fecit / “Indianer”.’ Theodor Fischer had a well-established firm of lithographers in Cassel by 1875, and he could be the publisher of this work. It shows a number of differences to both the known published work and the original watercolor. To our knowledge it is the only 19th-century lithograph of Bodmer's pioneering ethnographic work, recording the soon to vanish life of the Plains tribes.